Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets - Libcom

24Z KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS
REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT
compelled to put it out of the way, to dismiss those that but
yesterday they acclaimed as their chosen.
But it is not so easy to do so. The new government which
has hastened to organize a new administration in order to
extend its domination and make itself obeyed does not understand
giving up so easily. Jealous of maintaining its power,
it clings to it with all the energy of an institution which has
not yet had time to fall into senile decay. It decides to oppose
force with force, and there is only one means then to dislodge
it, namely, to take up arms, to make another revolution
in order to dismiss those in whom the people had placed all
their hopes.
There you see the revolution divided against itself! After
losing precious time in delays, it now loses its· strength in
internecine divisions between the friends of the new government
and those who see the necessity of dissolving it. And
all this happens because it has not been understood that a new
life requires new forms; that it is not by clinging to ancient
forms that a revolution can be carried out! . All this for not
having understood the incompatibility of revolution and government,
for not having seen that the one is, under whatever
form it presents itself, the negation of the other, and that
outside of anarchism there is no such thing as revolution.
It is just the same with regard to that other form of "revolutionary
government" so often extolled,-a revolutionary
-dictatorship.
DICTATORSHIP
The dangers to whch the revolution is exposed when it
allows itself to be controlled by an elected government are so
evident that a whole school of revolutionists entirely renounces
the idea of it. They understand that it is impossible for a
people in insurrection to give themselves, by means of elections,
any government but one that represents the past, and
which must be like leaden shoes on the feet of the people,
above all when it is necessary to accomplish that imense regeneration.
economic, political, and' moral, which we understand
by the social revolution. They renounce then the idea of
"legal" government at least during that period which is a
revolt against legality, and they advocate a "revolutionary
dictatorship."
"The party," say they, "which will have overturned the
government will take the place of it, of course. It will
seize upon power and proceed in a revolutionary manner. It
will take the measures necessary to secure the success of the
insurrection. It will demolish the old institutions; it will
organize the defense of the country. As for those who will
not recognize its authority, why the guillotine will settle
them, whether they belong to the people or the middle class,
if they refuse to obey the orders necessary for the advance of
the revolution." The guillotine still in action? See how
these budding Robespierres argue, who know nothing of the
grand epic of the century but its period of decline, men who
have never learned anything about it except from speeches
of the hangers-on of the Republic.
For us anarchists the dictatorship of an individual or of a
party (at bottom the very same thing) has been finally condemned.
We know that revolution and government are
incompatible. One must destroy the other no matter what
name is given to government, whether dictatorship, royalty,
or parliament. We know that what makes the strength and
the truth of our party is contained in this formula-"Nothing
good or durable can be done except by the free initiative of
the people, and every government tends to destroy it." And
so the very best among us, if they should become masters of
that formidable machine, the government, would become, in
a week, fit only for the gallows, if their ideas had not to pass
through the crucible of the popular mind before being put
into execution. We know whither every dictatorship leads,
even the best intentioned,-namely, to the death of all
revolutionary movement.
We know also, that this idea of
dictatorship is never anything more than a sickly product
of governmental fetish-worship, which, like religious fetish
worship, has always served to perpetuate slavery.